Some Roads Lead to Hell, Some Planes Lead to Worse
by geekery-pokery
Summary: After the crash of Flight 815, the Winchesters find themselves stranded with many other survivors on a mysterious island that is more than it appears to be.


**A/N: this honestly started out as a joke between me and my boyfriend... we love both Lost and Supernatural and we couldn't help noticing several similarities between the two shows. so, after some thoughtful consideration, i decided to have a go at combining the two to see what would happen. i honestly have no idea where exactly i'm going with this fic, but i don't care.**

**it's set in the pre-apocalyptic season 4 of Supernatural. changes to Lost canon will doubtless be made not only to fit the Supernatural universe but also because not even the writers knew what they were doing with that show so i'm going to take a few creative liberties.**

**anyway, here's chapter 1-it may be subject to revisions later on in the story since i haven't planned it out yet, so be warned.**

**also, for those of you following Sherlock Who, i am still going to update the fic; currently, however, this one's receiving most of my attention, so please be patient.**

* * *

The plane shuddered, causing Dean to grip the armrests of his seat far more tightly than was necessary. "Sammy." His gruff voice sounded more anxious than he'd care to admit.

The plane shook more violently now, so that Dean sat up straighter in his seat, tense with apprehension. Sam didn't reply.

"Sammy, we exorcised that demon, right? Like… _really_ exorcised it?" He couldn't help but relive for a moment the time when they'd tracked down a demon of chaos that was trying to crash a plane. He couldn't help but think that the experience had been very similar to the one he was having now. It wasn't, of course—his last adventure on a plane had been far more frightening than this—but in his mind, it was damn close.

Sam didn't even spare a glance up from the novel he was reading. "_Yes,_ Dean, relax. It's just turbulence." He closed the book, slipping it into the pouch on the back of the seat in front of him, and stood, his tall form bent nearly double under the luggage rack.

"Hey, where are you going?" asked Dean, wide-eyed, as Sam began to edge sideways toward the center aisle.

"To the bathroom," replied Sam in a disgruntled tone. Before Dean could call after him, he was heading off toward the back of the plane, leaving Cas sitting alone on the other side of Sam's empty seat.

The sight of the angel sitting as rigidly as Dean did nothing to comfort him—though it didn't perturb him, either. Cas had scarcely changed his position since the flight began except to go to the bathroom once. The three of them, on the trail of Lilith, had followed a fleeing demon to Sydney, Australia and were just now returning to America. Cas didn't technically have to come along on the flight, but Dean, who had had a traumatizing trip there, had insisted upon it "just in case some demonic bitch decides to jack the plane."

"Cas." The angel turned his blue eyes on Dean. He didn't seem remotely affected by what was going on, and the sight of a scared and anxious Dean didn't seem to bother him, either. "Cas, you sure there's no demons on this th—"

Before Dean could finish his question, the plane gave an almighty lurch. An alarm chimed through the suddenly thundering compartment as the _fasten seatbelt_ sign flashed blaring red. People were hurriedly strapping themselves into their seats, most of their faces reflecting how Dean felt.

Despite this, however, Dean was on his feet in a heartbeat, with only one thing on his mind: his brother. The plane was crashing. It had to be. This wasn't turbulence, was it? Whatever it was, he wouldn't have Sam on the other end of the plane when it was happening. If they were going to die a fiery death, they were going to die together.

"Sam! Sammy!" he shouted as the plane trembled more than ever. He staggered, grabbing onto the back of Sam's chair and a surprised stranger's shoulder to keep his balance, but before he could regain his footing, a rough hand grasped him by the elbow and yanked him down into Sam's seat. He could hear startled cries and a few other shrieked names through the din. Above the heads of panicking passengers, he could see nothing of his brother. Meanwhile, oxygen masks popped down in front of them, and one was shoved over Dean's face, the strap snapped around the back of his head. He started to protest, but the whole plane was shaking so hard that he could hardly see.

"Stay here!" he heard Cas shout over the noise, and for an instance he saw those clear eyes as if through a haze, staring intently into his.

Dean, however, pulled his mask away from his mouth just enough to gasp, "Sam—"

"I'll get him. Just _stay._" And Cas had gotten up from his seat, stumbling quickly down the aisle. Dean, despite how much the plane was rattling and quaking, turned his head to see where the angel had gone. In the background, it seemed to register to him that the plane was breaking. The very walls were cracking and splitting with a tremendous noise that was slightly muted in his popping ears. Suitcases were dropping out of the luggage racks—one of them hit a guy on the head—and paper and debris was flying everywhere. His heart was pounding. Somewhere it registered that the only thing below them was the ocean. This was his worst nightmare being enacted before his very eyes, terrifyingly real. The plane was crashing, Sam was nowhere to be found, and Cas was following after him…

Suddenly, one of the fissures in the wall of the plane widened so far that Dean caught sight of a sliver of blue sky through it. And before he knew what was happening, the tail end of the plane had broken off and sailed out of sight, passengers and all. For one brief second, he saw Cas's form outlined at the jagged edge of the fuselage, his trench coat billowing in the harsh winds created by the speed and the drastic change in pressure; then the angel had tumbled through the gap and, like the back of the plane—like Sam—, disappeared.

The next thing Dean remembered was the brightness of a sunny sky burning red across his lowered eyelids. His face and chest were uncomfortably hot, but a fluid coolness was dragging at his feet. _What…?_ He lifted a hand to rub his face, only to find something warm and sticky on the side of his head. His woozy groan was too loud in his ears, as though he had earplugs in, and everything else was muffled. His eyes blinked open, squinting against a white sun.

He was, apparently, on solid ground, which struck him as strange, since they'd been flying over nothing but water for several hours now. But the cold lapping at his legs he recognized as wave after wave of what he assumed to be the ocean. Where could he find solid ground and waves at the same time…? With the current state of his mind it took him a moment to place the answer, and even then only because he took a glance around his immediate surroundings and registered that he was lying on wet sand. They must've crashed on an island of some sort. But where? Hawaii? Did this mean they'd get help sooner?

He suddenly remembered why there was something gnawing at his heart and sat bolt-upright. The plane had crashed. The realization of this stark truth hit him like a sack of bricks to the face. Cas. _Sammy._ He leapt to his feet, whirling around—and froze.

The muted white noise in his ears was beginning to solidify, stabbed through by the sharp cries of people searching for loved ones. He could see smoke and bodies—lots of bodies, running, staggering, collapsing, lying, possibly dead—and, a short distance away along the beach, the broken chunks of fuselage, as well as a single towering wing hanging ominously over the scene. Debris and burning twisted chunks of metal were strewn across the beach, a field of jagged gray. The turbine engine on the other wing was still running somehow, sputtering like an old rusted motor, but Dean paid it little mind since it was so far away. Everyone he saw seemed to be blurred around the edges, yet even then he could tell he didn't recognize a single one of them.

"SAM! CAS!" he shouted, taking a step forward and nearly collapsing on the ground as his leg buckled underneath him. He looked down. The left leg of his jeans was torn to shreds over the shin, revealing a bloody mess beneath. For whatever reason, the pain hadn't registered yet—and he'd rather it stayed that way. Trying to ignore the lack of support from this leg, he began to limp up the beach, searching the fuzzy, frenzied figures for either his brother or his friend. No one seemed to notice him as he made his way through them, which was no surprise. Everyone was busy running back and forth, nursing wounds, shouting for loved ones, a few even attempting to pull their possessions out of the flames. "SAM!" Someone, a blonde kid who couldn't be older than twenty-five, was standing at the edge of the wreckage, fiddling his fingers and staring at the mess in shock. "SAMMY!"

As the shrieks of the others formed into words, he began to register certain phrases. One man was yelling for someone named Walt; one girl was just standing there with her mouth open, screaming; another man was shouting, "You! Hey, you!"

Dean looked around, not sure what to expect. The man was in a ragged, dusty suit, beckoning hastily at Dean. "I need your help! Get over here!" He beckoned to two other men, who dashed over quickly. After another glance around for Sam, Dean ran to the man's side and was directed to push against a particularly large chunk of debris which was currently pinning a man by the leg to the ground. He pushed. The injured man was pulled out, his leg shockingly red against the rest of the scenery.

_This could be Sam_, Dean realized. Sam could be lying somewhere, trapped under some monstrous weight. Maybe he was shouting Dean's name like Dean had been shouting his. Or maybe all the life had already been crushed out of him. Maybe a suitcase had hit him on the head like one had hit that other guy and he'd died of head trauma before the plane even crashed. And Cas… Well, who knows what happened to him? He could've landed in the middle of the ocean. Or wound up on the other side of the island. Or hit terminal velocity on his way down. Or impaled himself on a tree. It was unlikely that they would ever see each other again—_though_, said a voice in his head, _way more likely than seeing Sam…_

He didn't bother sticking around to see if the guy was alright. He had to find Sam and Cas. "SAMMY!" he shouted again, heading off through the thick clouds of smoke. "CAS!" Someone ran up to him, asking for a pen, but he ignored them. "CASTIEL!" _"I always come when you call,"_ he remembered the angel saying. So why wasn't he coming now? What was stopping him?

On the other side of the fuselage, scouring the sandy ground for any sign of a trench coat or a plaid shirt, he glanced up at the sound of someone shouting, "Get away from there!" They weren't talking to Dean, but rather to a man who had run in front of the turbine engine. One second, the man was standing there; the next, he'd been sucked into the engine.

Dean didn't even have a split-second to consider what he'd just seen before the engine exploded. He was thrown into the air and landed on the ground with enough force to punch the breath out of his lungs. He lay there on his back for a moment, gasping for breath and coughing as he sucked in a breath full of smoke. Eventually, when the air cleared somewhat, he was able to sit up, and from there, climb to his feet. He staggered away from the scene, his leg still half-dead and a few new holes in his shirt, continuing the search for either Sam or Cas.

_They could be anywhere, damn it._ Trapped under wreckage, blown apart by an explosion, drowned in the ocean, run through with shrapnel… Every bleeding body he passed made his heart jump in his throat. One of them he actually took the time to turn over, only satisfying himself when he saw that the man's face wasn't Sam's. He had been struck in the torso by a jagged chunk of metal.

As Dean rounded the corner of the fuselage, he had only a split second to register three people standing in the open space under the wing before an ominous creaking drew his gaze upward. The wing was dipping under its own weight, threatening to fall. Even as he noticed this, he heard someone yelling, "GET OUT! GET HER OUTTA THERE!" and saw the same man in a suit he'd met earlier waving madly toward two of the people. His tie was missing now, Dean noticed. They ran for the edge of the clearing, but the third—a man with dirty blond hair—didn't seem to have heard. Dean didn't hesitate. He charged across the open space as the wing let out a loud crack and dropped lower than ever. His fist closed around the man's sleeve and he yanked him back towards the edge, shoving the man in front of him.

"Hey!" yelled the man in surprise.

"Just go!" barked Dean with an extra push.

The next thing he knew, there was a mighty crash behind him, and everything went black.

-x-

It had to have all been a nightmare. A dream-root trip or some kind of demon mojo. Maybe he'd been thrown into Lucifer's cage, and this was the Devil's idea of torture.

Footsteps passed close by him. He could feel them in the sand near his head. He was still here, then—aching all over now, of course. His leg was throbbing, his head was pounding, there was a metallic taste in his mouth, and he felt like he'd been lying on his back on a skillet like a slice of bacon. His skin must've been steaming.

"Hang on—" muttered a voice by his ear. A girl. He felt two fingers on the side of his neck, and there was a quiet moment as they remained there, waiting, feeling. Then, "Jack—Jack, this one's still alive!"

His eyes fluttered open. The sky was a dull, dark purple, the color of fading dusk. How long had he been out? And why hadn't Sam been the one to find him…? "Sam…"

There was some rustling that he didn't pay much attention to until hands suddenly gripped him and rolled him over onto his back. He hissed in pain as his singed skin was pressed flat against what felt like a blanket or towel, which must've been laid out over the sand next to him. "What the hell—?" he protested weakly, lifting his head.

"He's awake," said the girl, and he caught sight of a very pretty face.

Another voice, presumably Jack's, said clearly, "Can you hear me? What's your name?"

"Dean," he grunted, trying to sit up. "Where's Sam? Have you seen my brother? Tall guy, looks like a hair model?"

Jack, whom Dean recognized as the guy running around in a suit earlier, didn't answer. "Dean, I need you to sit still. You've been injured pretty badly."

He felt a firm hand against his chest stopping him from sitting up, so he lay back down. The girl asked in a low voice, "What happened to his leg?" Dean could tell she hadn't meant him to hear, but at her question he looked down at the leg which now felt as though it were being stabbed repeatedly. Jack, who seemed to have found a sewing kit, was cutting away the leg of Dean's jeans to get a better look. Sticking out of his shin were what appeared to be three jagged pieces of shrapnel. He couldn't have said how deep into his leg they extended, but judging by the pain, the biggest one reached at least an inch. Stifling a groan, he let his head fall back. The sight didn't bother him—not with everything he'd seen—but he knew from the nature of the wound that it would be a while before it fully healed, if at all. He just hoped he'd be able to look for Sam and Cas among the wreckage, at least.

Jack touched the injury with ginger fingers, causing Dean to wince several times. "Does this hurt?" asked Jack, pressing down on a particularly sore spot.

Dean gritted his teeth. "Yes," he growled forcefully.

Jack was silent for a moment, examining it closely. "It looks like you've got a hairline fracture. You'll need some antibiotics to keep the swelling down, and I'll have to set the bone…" Jack trailed off before looking to the girl and instructing her to find some clean fabrics for bandages and a certain type of prescription drugs. Dean saw her vanish from his side, while Jack moved to kneel by his head. "Looks like you were hit with something," he said. Dean felt the man's fingers against his temple, which was caked with blood. "Your skull hasn't been fractured," he added after a moment, "and it doesn't look like you've had a concussion… Are you feeling nauseous or seeing double, anything like that?"

"No," Dean grunted. "You a doctor?" The question came out more accusatory than he'd intended, but he didn't apologize.

"Yeah," said Jack, with a weak chuckle. "Yeah, I am."

"Bet you've been busy."

The smile faded. "Yeah."

The girl returned just then, dropping down next to them with an armful of clothes consisting of what looked like a T-shirt, a button-down, and a pair of holey sweatpants. "Thanks," said Jack, taking the T-shirt first and tearing it into strips. "I'm going to pull out these two," he said to Dean a moment later, presumably gesturing towards two of the metal shards. To the girl, he added, "Kate, hold him down so he doesn't struggle."

Dean felt a hand on each of his shoulders and looked up into Kate's upside-down face, causing a lopsided smile to soften his grimace. "I'd let you hold me d—"

Dean was unable to finish his line because, at that moment, Jack yanked the smallest piece of shrapnel out of his leg. Cut off mid-sentence, he tensed and groaned involuntarily, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he gritted his teeth, his hands clenching so tightly into fists that his fingernails dug into his palms. Kate shifted her grip slightly, pressing his shoulders into the sand. By the time he could bring himself to look, Jack was binding up the wound with one of the strips of fabric. Once again, he let his head fall back into the sand. Kate, he saw, looked faintly amused.

The entire process was repeated with the second piece of shrapnel. It was a bit worse, as it was slightly deeper, but, like the first, the pain dulled after a minute. On the third, however, Jack warned, "This one seems to have hit bone, so it'll probably hurt more than the other two."

"More?" repeated Dean weakly.

Sure enough, he growled through his teeth, his spine curling back slightly, unable to stifle the automatic reaction as the piece was shifted from his leg. It felt like a fang scraping against his already broken bone. Jack, he noticed, seemed to be having a harder time staunching the bleeding long enough to close the wound; he pressed a wad of fabric against it for what felt like a minute straight before being able to pull it away long enough to sew it shut. Dean's fingers dug into the sand as he felt the needle dipping in and out of his skin, pulling the cut together stitch by stitch. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling—Dean had had to sew up his fair share of war wounds—but it was still damn uncomfortable.

"Hurley—Hurley!" he heard Jack call as he was finishing up.

"Yeah, dude?" answered a slightly uneasy voice.

"Check the edges of the beach, see if you can find a branch that'll work as a good crutch," instructed Jack. He continued working, tying off the thread and cutting it with his teeth. Jack was tying a third cloth bandage around the stitched-up cut when Dean heard heavy footsteps approaching.

"Will this work?" asked the one apparently called Hurley.

"Yeah, that's great. Thanks," replied Jack, sounding a little preoccupied as he finished wrapping up the wound. Without warning, Jack grabbed Dean's ankle with both hands and yanked on it hard. Dean seemed to feel something click into place inside of his leg; at the same time, a bolt of agony lanced up the entire limb, causing him to jerk and cry out hoarsely.

"What the hell was that?" he panted as the initial sting died down to a low throbbing.

"I had to set it," said Jack apologetically. "Hurts less if you don't see it coming."

Kate, clearly stifling a laugh, released his shoulders and sat back in the sand. Dean laid there for a moment, annoyed and slightly embarrassed—then he sat up, wincing as he rolled his shoulders. His leg, he saw, had been wrapped up neatly. It was throbbing worse than ever, but the pain seemed to have dulled, at least. Lying next to him was now a slim, smooth log, long-since stripped of its bark, with a neat Y-shape at the top. It'd have to do, he supposed.

Jack held out a couple pills and a water bottle. "These are antibiotics. They'll help take down the swelling and keep out infection." Dean swallowed the pills without touching the water. There were other people who would need hydration more than he did. "You'll need to get the bandages changed at least once a day," instructed Jack. "If I don't find you before this time tomorrow, you need to track me down, okay?" When Dean nodded stiffly, he continued, "I'm trying to conserve the painkillers, since we don't know how long we'll be here, so you might be in for a rough night. Make sure you get plenty of rest over the next couple days. Don't move around too much and don't put any stress on the leg, or else the bone could break and cause permanent damage. If the pain gets any worse or you get feverish or show any other signs of illness, come find me. Got it?"

Dean nodded again. Then he asked, "How long d'you think it'll be before they find us?"

"I don't know," admitted Jack after a moment's hesitation. "But I think we should prepare for a longer stay than we expected."

Dean tried not to let any of his apprehension at this piece of news show. Coast Guard had been his last hope of finding Sam sometime in the next couple days; God knows they'd be quicker at searching the ocean than he would. "Thanks," he muttered.

Jack nodded without a word. After a last sympathetic look, he stood and walked away, Kate following after him. Dean remained there for a while, sitting in the cool sand, watching as the sky grew darker. By the looks of the wreckage from here, nothing had been cleaned up or cleared away. A few fires had been lit, and though their warmth was welcome to him, he didn't get up yet.

Since Sam hadn't been the one to find him then that meant he was either dead or too far away—so, the only thing left for Dean to do was to comb the crash and check each body. If none of them were Sam, well… he didn't know what he'd do then. But he wouldn't give up. As Sam himself had said, people don't disappear—other people stop looking for them.

Reluctantly, he grabbed the makeshift crutch and used it to heave himself to his feet. It was a slow, hobbling pace as he struggled to gain familiarity with this new device, leaning wholly on it with every other step. He made his way towards the nearest fire, around which were clustered a group of six people. Without making eye contact with any of them, he grunted, "Anybody got a flashlight?"

Six people stared blankly back at him for a moment before one of them asked, "What do you need it for?"

The man who had spoken was clearly Middle-Eastern, as evidenced not only by his tanned skin and curly black hair but also his strong accent. Dean wasn't sure whether or not to trust him, but he had a feeling that this was someone he would want on his side. "I need to check the bodies," answered Dean, shifting his weight.

"Leave it till morning, friend," replied the man, not unkindly. "We've already gone through them. All the ones that are still alive have been taken care of."

"It's my brother," replied Dean, ashamed at admitting his weakness but stubbornly refusing to give it up. "I gotta look."

Both men stared at each other for a moment, and a certain level of understanding seemed to pass between them. "Very well," answered the other man. He stood, stooping to grab a stick out of the fire and holding it out like a torch. "I'll help you."

So, together, they set off down the beach. The man, who introduced himself as Sayid, checked his pace to match Dean's uneven limp and brandished the torch before them, a ward against the darkness. They talked little, but Dean decided he liked the man. He had a certain assurance about him, an empathetic understanding that passed without words.

"What does he look like?" asked Sayid as they reached the first body. It was a middle-aged man with a gut and graying hair; Dean shook his head.

"Tall. Like, freakishly tall. And hair that goes down to his shoulders. He was wearing a plaid shirt."

They moved from body to body, marking a scattered zigzag path across the sand. Dean saw a woman with a crushed-in skull; a man with a missing arm; a boy with a bloody hole in his gut. Once his heart skipped a beat as he saw a man with a plaid shirt and hair like Sam's face-down in the sand, but, like the one earlier, he only needed to flip it over to see that it wasn't his brother. All throughout their search, they remained silent. Occasionally Sayid's torch would linger over one and Dean would shake his head and they would move on.

Finally, after they'd scoured the beach, they turned to the last of the bodies, which were those in the fuselage. Dean doubted he would find Sam in there—he would've noticed if his brother came back or passed him before the plane went down. Still, he couldn't leave a single stone unturned. He had to know for sure that Sam wasn't here before he accepted the possibility that he may never know exactly what happened to him. Paranoia that his body had landed in the ocean, that he'd drowned too far out at sea, or that he'd been dead before he hit the water threatened to consume Dean as he pushed through the curtain of pipes and wires hanging over the opening where the tail had broken off.

Whether it was the walls of the plane blocking out the noise or the sheer hush of death, Dean didn't know, but everything was quieter, muted, in the presence of so many dead. Oxygen masks hung like misshapen vines from a half-burnt, plastic canopy, swaying in a noiseless breeze. Most of the seats were empty, marking either the bodies on the beach or the survivors by the fires, but the rest were taken by motionless figures slumped as if sleeping. One was sprawled face-down in the aisle Dean was standing in. A few leaned sideways out of their chairs, lifeless hands dangling in the still air.

Dean had seen Sam's eyes nearly bleed out in a shop full of mirrors. He had seen two Reapers come after him. He had seen ghosts that turned out not to be ghosts at all. He had seen a shapeshifter commit murder in his own skin. He had seen demonic children and serial killers and Changelings and hellhounds. He had seen his brother sucking blood from a demon's neck. But of all those things, none of them were quite as chilling or unsettling as what lay before him then.

Afraid to disturb the eerie peace, he made his way gradually inside. The light from Sayid's torch gave him some comfort, but it also made him uneasy; he felt like things just out of his sight were shuffling away from it, fleeing into the shadows before he could see what exactly they were. He also felt clumsy and awkward, maneuvering the crooked floor with his crutch and his injured leg. The body on the floor posed quite some difficulty for him to hobble around, but he managed it without stepping on it. Sayid remained on the other side of the dead man, but the burning stick provided enough light for Dean to see that none of the bodies belonged to Sam. He received a scare when he saw the body of a man in a trench coat like Cas's, but a second look told him it wasn't the missing angel. He descended down the other aisle, trying not to look as if he was hurrying.

"Where was your brother when the plane went down?" asked Sayid when they emerged from the fuselage.

"The back," replied Dean. "He'd gone to the bathroom right before the 'fasten seatbelt' sign came on."

"Then it's no wonder he wasn't here," said Sayid. "Judging by the direction the plane was facing when it crashed, the tail end would've gone down deeper in the jungle, possibly on the other side of this island." He paused, and a kinder note entered his voice: "Your brother could still be alive."

Dean stopped in his tracks, eyes wide. Hope bloomed in his heart as he stared at the man, unsure of whether or not to believe this miraculous information. "You sure?" he asked. It was too good to be true, surely.

"I wouldn't bet on it," said Sayid cautiously. "We were very lucky. But there is a chance. If we survived, maybe they did, too." He clasped Dean by the shoulder and headed back towards the fire. After a moment of stunned silence, Dean followed after.

_Alive._ He could be alive. On the other side of the island maybe, but alive. Anyway, that was nothing. He could be on the other side of the world and Dean would find him. Cas was another story—but who knows, he could be out there somewhere, too.

Dean knew there was no prospect of sleeping for several hours, so he settled down by the fire with Sayid and leaned against a piece of the wreckage, watching the flames. As desperate as he was to find Sam, even he knew how foolish it would be to go into the jungle this late at night alone with an injured leg; he had no other choice but to wait until morning. And until then… Well, even now his heart was pounding. Dead or alive, he would find Sam somehow. Cas, too. There was no doubt about it.

-x-

The stars had long been out and he was just starting to nod off when something snapped him out of his dozing. It was a sound like a train whistle, long and loud and high-pitched, the scream of a strange machine. People were standing up, looking around, frightened or nervous. Dean, too, rose stiffly from his sitting position on the sand, leaning heavily on his crutch.

The noise came again, this time accompanied by a clicking _tikka-tikka_ sound that he couldn't identify. As the whistle died away, a distant tree crashed to the ground, followed by what sounded like several more. He listened with growing apprehension to the cracking of breaking wood and could've sworn he saw branches swaying much closer than they sounded, a violent disturbance in the initially quiet jungle.

His suspicions immediately went to the supernatural, but what could be so huge as to topple whole copses of trees? Nothing he'd ever met, that's for sure. And those noises—he'd never heard them before, not from anything he'd ever fought, nor was there any lore mentioning them.

Everyone stood motionless, suspended for a brief moment in the silence of their suppressed fears. They waited as the strange entity crashed through the jungle. Then, abruptly, it fell silent. The whistle faded into the night. When it didn't repeat itself people began to shift uneasily, calling out questions or muttering amongst themselves, but no one had any answers for each other.

Dean turned away from the fire, using his crutch to move towards the fuselage. He faltered for a moment now that he was approaching it without Sayid's light, but the possibility that a monster had somehow followed them to the island pushed him onward. He didn't need to go into the fuselage, anyway—he found what he was looking for on the beach a little ways away: a section of iron piping about two feet long and an inch in diameter. Dean scooped it up, hefted it, and carried it back with his free arm. While people were still standing around, chatting nervously about what they'd just seen, Dean settled back down in his place by the fire, laid the pipe next to him, and leaned his head back to sleep. It came quicker than he expected.


End file.
